Design tip and tricks: Ads & Fads
Posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009
by block club
You don’t have to have an elaborate campaign to find creative examples of marketing. Two groups of young entrepreneurs have shown that big results, and even bigger media hits, can be attained by seizing an opportunity and with little to no marketing budget.
Two advantageous frequent flyers took up JetBlue on their recent “All-You-Can-Jet” campaign, and maximized their exposure and entertainment. Two days after this unique unlimited flight promotion was announced, Joe Dinardo and Clark Dever hatched a plan to fly to a new city every day for 30 days. “Twelve Hours In A City” was born. They would spend an entire month living it up in different cities for only 12 hours at a time, then fly to the next destination. How did they know what to do when they landed? That’s where social media came into play. They spread the word through their Facebook page and Twitter posts, and used a Wiki page to allow friends and strangers to suggest places to see and things to do in each city. The campaign took on a life of its own, evident by the 170 different international television interviews, over 2,300 Facebook fans and over 330,000 Google search results. Joe and Clark proved that a little word of mouth can travel pretty far, in this case, every city JetBlue travels and beyond. (Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, Wiki pages, YouTube and their excellent use of free social media).
Another young idea man who took advantage of the masses is Ryan Abshagen, a fed up Buffalo Bills fan who wanted to see change in the team’s management and elicited action. Within three days of a second straight embarrassing loss, Ryan’s efforts on the blog he launched raised over $1,200 to run a digital billboard on I-90 in Buffalo calling for the firing of head coach Dick Jauron. The donation total really hit its stride once ESPN, Fox News, NFL.com and others picked up the story and made it national sports news. National media exposure, and expensive digital billboards; all of this from a regular guy who was sick of mediocrity from his favorite football team and wanted something done. This is another perfect example of the power of social media to virally spread your message to the masses.
